


quemando

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: on fire [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (... in space), Bodhi really just wants to go home and yell at Luke about his moronic friends, F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, Road Trips, Third Wheels, Undercover as a Couple, unprofessional but true
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Honest to Force, Bodhi doesn't know what he did to deserve this pair of pining, yearning idiots.





	quemando

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to _callar y quemarse_ , hence the title. Special thanks to Jack of Auster for the beta!

“You’re doing it again,” Bodhi hissed, yanking at the fabric of the gauntlets he’d been given as part of his disguise. They itched almost as much as the bandages and stitches, and - as he had been at pains to explain to Jyn and Cassian, stumbling over their false names - no pilot would ever wear them. If your cockpit was cold enough for gauntlets, the pressure was gone and you were already dead. You didn’t wear gauntlets, for kriff’s sake, even if your wife had bought them for you; it made it that much harder to manipulate delicate controls. And he wasn’t cold, anyway.

Unperturbed by Bodhi’s complaints, Cassian had continued buttoning up Bodhi’s coat and checking his stitches with his characteristic fussiness, a trait now turned to service his false identity. He’d replied that Ashlok had married his smotheringly careful partners, and was just going to have to live with them.

Bodhi, who was just about managing to answer to a name that had been chosen while he was concussed and delirious, did not recall ever agreeing to marry either Jyn or Cassian. The fact that he was stuck with the cover story didn’t make it any more bearable, especially given the dramatic loss of acting ability he’d witnessed in both his friends since he’d regained consciousness. And the fact that he kept having to cover for them was doing a number on both his nerves and his temper.

His latest statement hadn’t registered with Jyn, who was watching the back of Cassian’s head with softened durasteel eyes and a miserable turn to her mouth. Bodhi kicked her unobtrusively.

Jyn turned an awful glare on him, which Bodhi reciprocated.

“Stop staring at Yannick like he’s your lost love,” Bodhi snapped at her, very quietly. “You’re married to him.”

Jyn, for some reason, went dull scarlet and ducked away.

Bodhi pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, and then let his head fall back against the slightly imperfect headrest of his seat aboard a shabby passenger shuttle. The impact jarred his stitches, and he swore; he hoped nobody realised he’d sworn in Jedhan, but he was too tired and sore and annoyed to get really anxious about it. Jedhan itself, after all, wasn’t inherently suspicious - and most people in the galaxy couldn’t recognise it if you paid them.

The whole mess, whatever it was, hadn’t been an issue before they’d gone to Despoina for information and had their ship destroyed in the same Imperial bombardment that had injured Bodhi. He wasn't sure what had got into Jyn and Cassian while he’d lain unconscious in a hospital bed, but he wished they’d get over it. The Sisters of Safe Haven at Despoina had discharged him with a warning about the headaches he might feel as he recovered, and he did indeed have a vile headache. As they straggled back towards the Rebel Alliance, the tension and distance between Jyn and Cassian was only making that headache worse. He’d thought it was sweet and a little intimidating, if sometimes annoying, when they behaved like they had a secret, personal line to the inside of each other’s heads. He hadn’t realised how awful it would be if that ease drained away and they moved awkwardly around each other, hands snatched away too quickly, yearning looks when the other couldn’t see.

Bodhi thought he could cheerfully have lived the rest of his life without seeing Cassian yearn. It was heartbreaking.

Nearly as heartbreaking as watching Jyn watch the back of Cassian’s head.

Bodhi sighed again, and caught the eye of an exhausted middle-aged Zabrak, looking for work off his own planet. The Zabrak looked sympathetic, which was a terrible thing. Bodhi wondered if he thought Bodhi was merely a little jealous, or if he was imagining them all on the brink of a divorce.

  
Several days later, now on board a smuggler’s ship moored on Dantooine’s smallest moon, Bodhi was starting to dream longingly of Luke’s habit of blurting all his feelings out, even if it consistently put Bodhi himself on the back foot. Luke also never kicked in the night. Cassian invariably did, and he always hit Bodhi.

“Something the matter with your husband and wife?” asked the smugglers’ medic, prodding experimentally at the stitches the Sisters had put into his scalp, back in Despoina.

“Don’t ask me,” Bodhi said grumpily. His temper had not been improved by a week of constant pining and dodgy transport. “It all happened while I was unconscious. Ow!”

“This might sting a bit,” the medic said belatedly, holding a clutch of staples in her triple-jointed fingers. “Well, that sucks.”

Bodhi reached back to investigate the healing cut on his scalp, the short bristly hair where it had been shaved back for the stitches. Luke would laugh, he thought, at his lopsided hairstyle, but he’d worry too, and suddenly Bodhi wanted someone to make a bit of a fuss of him - just not the way Jyn and Cassian were doing it. Bodhi was reasonably convinced that they were fretting over him as some kind of avoidance tactic, in order to escape having to actually deal with whatever they’d done to each other, and it was irritating.

“They’ll work it out,” Bodhi said. “They have these… tiffs… sometimes. They always sort themselves out.”

“You’re very calm about it,” the medic said. Bodhi thought she approved.

Bodhi shrugged, and let his eyes travel over to where Jyn and Cassian were slicing their way into some of the smugglers’ merchandise in order to anonymise it and wipe out its Imperial past, totally focussed on their separate work and sitting slightly too close to each other. Sure enough, Jyn bumped Cassian’s knee by accident, and the pair of them glanced up and stared at each other a little too long.

Bodhi sighed. “Just like when we were first together,” he said, loudly and meaningfully. Neither of them twitched.

The medic patted him on the hand. “Good luck,” she said.

  
Halfway between Bespin and Altesia - the Rebel Alliance had moved since they’d left for Despoina - Jyn and Cassian fell asleep on each other’s shoulders in a tiny spaceport hostel. It was exactly the kind of place Yannick, Ashlok and Kestrel would have gone to if money was a bit tight; fairly secure, cheap, not too dirty if you didn’t look closely at the corners, built to the same pattern as every other spacers’ hostel in the galaxy. Bodhi knew the kind of thing well. Lower Imperial ranks didn’t get to find an official berth in every Imperial port.

The three of them had been given one large bunk, not really designed for human occupancy, but turned over to them because the manager had seen Cassian kiss Bodhi on the cheek and check the healing cut on his head and thought they made an adorable trio. They were still paying three guests’ worth for use of the one bed, so Bodhi suspected commercial motivations had more to do with it than the kindness of the manager’s heart. The hostel was booking up fast.

Out of spite, he didn’t wake either of them, but left them where they had fallen asleep on the bed next to him, slumped against the wall and nestled against each other. Jyn’s frowning face was turned into Cassian’s shoulder and her hand tucked confidingly over his waist, one ankle hooked around Cassian’s by way of an anchor. Cassian’s face was resting on the top of Jyn’s head, strands of her cleanish hair (the hostel’s refreshers weren’t great) wavering a little with his breath, and one of his arms was curled around her like she was precious. They looked very sweet. A perfectly convincing married couple, tucked up together next to their third.

Bodhi prayed for patience. The sexual tension between the two of them had always been overwhelming, and Wedge Antilles had more than once floated the idea of locking them in a cupboard and leaving matters to resolve themselves, but this - this touch-and-turn-away was beyond a joke. They were both miserable. And it was incredibly irritating.

He yawned himself, sitting with a cushion pressed between his back and the hostel wall, a datapad running the local news for this sector loose in his hands. He wasn't paying as much attention as he should be.

Another guest entered the room - Bodhi had already marked him out as an Imperial cadet; low-ranking by the state of him, but full of hopes, the child of an aspiring family; Bodhi recognised the symptoms – and dumped his things on an upper bunk, smiling shyly at Bodhi.

“Is it catching?” he said, and Bodhi thought _Stars, you’re younger than Luke_. He wasn’t much more than a well-scrubbed kid. “Tiredness, I mean?”

“I guess,” Bodhi said, and shrugged.

The cadet darted his eyes at Jyn and Cassian. “They made up, then. Your spouses.” He coughed. “I saw them earlier - looked a bit…”

Bodhi let him get as uncomfortable as he liked.

“… tense,” the cadet finished, flushing around the ears.

Bodhi patted Jyn’s thigh. She twitched, but didn’t wake, which was fortunate. “They’re just difficult with each other, sometimes.” Bodhi searched for a word. “Tempestuous.”

The cadet was clearly stuck for a response. After some moments, he volunteered: “I guess it must have compensations, though. I mean, you married them.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, unable to keep a note of dry frustration out of his voice. “I did.” He shrugged again, and took a malicious pleasure in adding: “They’re not always like this.” He hoped at least one of them was awake and listening.

The cadet murmured something and escaped, probably to buy a meal. This wasn’t the kind of classy establishment that fed people.

Bodhi’s eyes rested aimlessly on his feet stretched out before him for several minutes, his datapad lying abandoned in his lap. It was always difficult when the Empire reminded him it still had a humane face.

Cassian and Jyn woke after several more minutes; Jyn went unnaturally still, her neck and ears flushing pink with suppressed embarrassment, and then shifted away, concentrating so hard on making it look casual that she accidentally put all her weight on Bodhi’s right thigh, right on one of the bruises that had gone down to the bone. Bodhi, annoyed beyond all reason, swore at her.

  
Their last stop was at least Rebellion-affiliated, although the group they were taking shelter with wasn’t formally part of the Rebellion, and had only been trusted with the details of an outpost where they could drop Jyn, Cassian and Bodhi. Bodhi was grateful; surely this meant that Cassian and Jyn could drop the cover story, and please, for the love of the Living Force, sort themselves out. It had been two weeks, and being stuck in the middle of whatever emotional torture they were inflicting on each other was driving him round the twist.

He waited around, with high hopes, for several days; their hosts could only take Jyn, Cassian and Bodhi to the agreed drop-off point when their own operations allowed, and those did not run on a schedule to suit battered spies straggling home. Bodhi spent much of his time working on his hosts’ small fleet of shabby ships, under careful supervision, and learning his way around the controls and engines.

Jyn and Cassian, however, had little to do other than stew. Their principal skills were not welcome; nobody wanted a potentially hostile analyst running wild in their data, and strange slicers weren't in demand either. They weren’t allowed at the computers, because there was no careful supervision that could stop Jyn or Cassian slipping a bug in just where it wasn’t wanted, and they weren’t here to spy or forge or steal.

So they had literally nothing to do but talk to each other, and they weren't even managing to do that. Bodhi despaired.

Nor were they doing a good job of pretending to be Jyn and Cassian, Rebel spies: professional, confident and platonic. It had taken, to Bodhi’s certain knowledge, fifteen hours for them to become the subject of a betting pool. Maybe, if they’d had some kind of occupation or been in a less visible position, it would have been easier - Bodhi thought they were less awkward around each other than before, just… too formal and prone to looking a little too long, and without the potential excuse of being a couple on the rocks - but they were a pair of Rebel spies stuck in close quarters in an Rebellion-affiliated group with nothing to do. It was very clear that neither of them was as comfortable with the other as they were with Bodhi, and now that couldn’t be explained away by relationship problems, because they weren’t supposed to be in a romantic relationship in the first place.

Bodhi did nothing whatsoever to stop the gossip, and he’d given up on trying to get Jyn and Cassian to deal with whatever their real problem was. He shovelled some kind of root mash into his mouth and listened while the grubby engineers around him speculated gleefully about the spies who were having so much trouble dealing with each other’s existence.

He was working on an intractable power coupling when he heard light, familiar footsteps, and low, intense voices. He sighed noiselessly, and prepared himself to intervene.

Jyn and Cassian, just around the corner, did not appear to have noticed him. He was deep in shadow, from their perspective, and had been puzzling at the wires rather than applying brute force with a wrench for some time, so he hadn’t made much noise. Bodhi decided not to interrupt, and stayed on the dirty concrete floor, twisting a bit of debris that had got into the power coupling and was probably the root of all the trouble with it.

“How was I - you didn't _react_ ,” Jyn said, a little louder, and Cassian hushed her, hands by her shoulders. They were in each other’s space again, close as shadows and moving around each other like planets around their sun; that had to be a good sign.

At least, there wasn’t any shouting going on.

Cassian said something soft, and one of those hovering hands brushed her cheek. Jyn caught it, but she held onto it; she didn’t push him away. From what Bodhi could see without leaning too far out of his protective carapace of opened panelling, she was rubbing her thumb along the palm, her eyes fixed on Cassian’s.

“I thought I’d hurt you,” Jyn said, as gently as she could, but there were underlying currents in her voice - distress, or something. “Or upset you. I - Cassian -”

What the hell had happened while Bodhi was unconscious? He shifted a little, getting pins and needles in his toes, and tried to think of some way of escaping unobtrusively.

“No,” Cassian said, sounding stunned, and now he was holding both her hands and they were so close together they were silhouetted against the light as one. “No, Jyn, I was just surprised. A good surprise.”

“Oh,” Jyn said, soft and half-broken, fragile and full of a tentative hope. “That’s… that’s good.”

“Yeah,” Cassian replied, equally soft.

There were a few seconds of silence, and then a rustling, and a thud of someone heavy hitting the side of a ship. Bodhi peered round a corner to check.

Yes, they were definitely kissing. Jyn had pushed Cassian into the side of the little shuttle and dragged him down to her level by his shirt, no less, and his hands had slid directly up her vest at the back. Clearly they weren’t of a mind to waste any time. Bodhi’s split-second glimpse was accompanied by a half-heard desperate noise from Jyn, and the sight of Jyn winding her arms around Cassian’s neck; as Bodhi retired hastily behind the panelling again, he heard Cassian mutter _querida_ , voice rough with emotion, and saw him lift Jyn with his arms round her waist so that she was balancing on her toes.

Bodhi allowed himself a small smile, and - out of a sense of benign charity - gave it five minutes before he kicked the toolbox over to disturb them.

At least this way he might not have to cope with the pining any more.


End file.
